Текст книги "Skeleton Coast"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

Which she’d thought she’d taken by coming to Namibia, but now this was turning out to be a bust, and her logic came full circle to being angry at herself for being so wrong.

The air grew a bit chilly with the wind coming off the cold water. She shrugged into her sweater and paid her tab, leaving a generous tip even though her guidebook said waiters didn’t expect one.

She started back to her hotel, taking a different route than before just to see more of the old town. The sidewalks were quiet except around a couple of restaurants and there was no traffic on the street. While wealthy by Africa’s standards, Namibia was still a poor country, and people tended to live with the rhythms of the day. Most were asleep by eight, so there were few lights in the homes.

Sloane became aware of the footsteps when the wind died suddenly. Without its gentle hiss the tap of shoes on concrete carried easily. She turned and saw a shadow duck around a corner. Had the person kept coming she would have considered the moment a figment of paranoia. But the person didn’t want her to know he was there, and Sloane realized she wasn’t all that familiar with this part of the city.

She knew her hotel was to her left, four, maybe five streets over. It dominated Bahnhof Street, so if she could reach that road she’d be fine. She took off running, lost a sandal after only a couple of steps and quickly kicked off the other as her pursuer gave a startled grunt at her reaction and started after her.

Sloane ran as hard as she could, her bare feet slapping against the sidewalk. Just before she turned a corner she chanced looking back. There were two of them! She thought they might have been a pair of the fishermen she and Tony had questioned, but she could tell both men were white and it looked like one of them had a pistol.

She careened around the corner and ran even harder. They would gain on her, she knew, but if she could just reach the hotel she was sure they’d back off. Her arms pumping, wishing she’d worn a sports bra rather than the lacy thing she’d chosen, Sloane dashed across a side street. The men were momentarily out of view, so when she saw an alley she dashed down it instinctively.

She was almost at the end where it opened onto another road when she kicked a metal can she hadn’t seen in the darkness. The pain of her stubbed toe was nothing compared to her fury at not seeing the can.

It clanged like a rung bell, and as she emerged from the alley she knew her pursuers had heard it, too.

She turned left once again and saw a car approaching. Sloane ran into the street waving her arms over her head frantically. The car slowed. She could see a man and a woman inside, children in the backseat.

The woman said something to her husband and he looked away guiltily as he accelerated past her.

Sloane cursed. She’d lost precious seconds hoping they would help. She ran again, her lungs beginning to burn.

The crack of the pistol shot and the spray of concrete dust exploding off the building next to her struck Sloane at the same instant. The gunman had missed her head by less than a foot. She fought the instinct to duck, which would have slowed her pace, and continued to sprint like a gazelle, weaving right and left with sharp movements to throw off their aim.

She saw a sign for Wasserfall Street and knew she was only half a block from her hotel. She put on a burst of speed she never thought she was capable of and emerged onto Bahnhof Street. Her hotel was almost directly ahead and a string of cars cruised down the wide lane. There were plenty of lights around the old converted train station. She danced through traffic, ignoring the honks, and finally reached the hotel’s entrance. She turned back. The two men lurked across the street, glaring at her. The shooter had hidden his pistol under his jacket. He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, “This was a warning!

Leave Namibia or the next time I won’t miss.”

A spark of defiance compelled Sloane to want to give him the finger, but all she could do was slump to the ground as tears welled in her eyes and her chest convulsed. A doorman approached her a moment later.

“Are you okay, miss?”

“I’m fine,” Sloane said, getting to her feet and dusting her backside. She knuckled the moisture from her eyes. The spot where the men had stood was deserted. Even though her lip still quivered and her legs felt like gel, Sloane squared her shoulders, deliberately raised her right arm, and then extended her middle finger.

8

THEthick stone walls could not absorb her screams. The walls soaked up the heat of the sun until the rock was too hot to touch, but they let Susan Donleavy’s tortured wailing echo almost as if she were in the next cell. At first Geoff Merrick had forced himself to listen, as if bearing witness to her pain could somehow give the young woman comfort. He had stoically endured her piercing shrieks for an hour, flinching each time she hit a note of agony so high it felt like his skull would shatter like a piece of crystal.

Now, as he sat on the earthen floor of his cell, he held his hands clamped over his ears and hummed to drown out her cries.

They’d taken her just after dawn, when the prison had yet to become stifling and the light through the room’s single glassless window high on the east wall still held promise. The cell block measured at least fifty feet square and at least thirty feet high. It was divided into numerous jail cells with stone walls on three sides and iron bars for the fourth and the ceiling. A second and third tier of cells ringed the room above him, accessible by wrought-iron circular stairways. Despite the apparent antiquity of the facility the iron bars were as secure as a modern super-max prison.

Merrick had yet to see any of his captors’ faces. They’d worn ski masks when they rammed his car off the road just outside his laboratory and on the flight to this hellhole. There were at least three of them, he knew, because of differences in their bodies. One was large and hulking, and wore nothing but sleeveless athletic Tshirts. Another was slender and had bright blue eyes, while the third was distinguishable because he wasn’t the other two.

In the three days since the abduction, their jailers hadn’t spoken a single word to either of them. They’d been stripped in the van that had smashed into their cars and given jumpsuits to wear. All their jewelry was removed and instead of shoes they had rubber flip-flops. They were given two meals a day and Merrick’s cell had a hole in the floor for a toilet that blew hot air and sand whenever the wind picked up outside. Since being dumped into the prison the jailers had only come around to feed them.

Then this morning they came for Susan. Because her cell was on another row within the block, Merrick couldn’t be sure, but it had sounded as if they’d yanked her to her feet by her hair. They had bundled her past him on their way out the room’s lone door, a thick metal affair with peepholes.

Susan was pale, her eyes already sheened over with despair. He had called her name and rushed his bars in an effort to touch her, to give her a token of human compassion, but the smallest guard smashed the bars with a nightstick. Merrick fell back helpless as they dragged her away. Estimating the heat that had built in the room he believed four hours had passed since then. It had been quiet at first and then the screams came. And now Susan was well into her second hour of torture.

In the first hours of their kidnapping, Merrick had been certain this was about money—that their captors would demand cash in exchange for their release. He knew the Swiss authorities had a zero-tolerance policy when dealing with hostage takers but he also knew there were companies that specialized in negotiating with kidnappers. Because of the recent spate of abductions in Italy, Merrick had instructed his board of directors to find such negotiators if he were ever taken and secure his freedom no matter the cost.

But after being flown blindfolded for at least six hours, Merrick didn’t know what was going on. He and Susan had whispered to each other late at night, speculating on their captors’ intentions. While Susan insisted it had to be about his money and she was caught up in the abduction as a witness, Merrick wasn’t so sure. He hadn’t been asked to speak to anyone in the company about getting a ransom together or been given any indication that his people even knew he and Susan were still alive. Nothing so far fit what he knew about kidnapping. Admittedly, the rudimentary executive security course he’d taken had been years ago, but he recalled enough to know his abductors did not fit the usual profile.

And now this. They were torturing poor Susan Donleavy, a loyal, dedicated employee who knew little beyond her test tubes and beakers. Merrick recalled their conversation a few weeks back about her idea of ending oil spills with her trick plankton. He hadn’t told her that while her goals were indeed lofty, her concept seemed a bit outlandish. His whole speech about revenge being a great motivator was just that, a speech, one he’d given an hundred times in a hundred variations. She’d have better luck overcoming a childhood trauma with a psychiatrist than in her laboratory.

Thinking about her project made him consider all the other research currently under way at Merrick/Singer. He’d done this many times since landing in the cell. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, they were working on that would warrant what was happening if this was a case of industrial espionage. They weren’t close to patenting anything new or revolutionary. In fact, they hadn’t had a really profitable patent since he and Dan Singer first marketed their sulfur scrubbers. The company was basically a vanity project for him now, a way to keep his hands in the world of research chemistry and to get invitations to speak at symposiums.

The screaming stopped. It wasn’t a slow wind down, but a sudden cessation of sound that was more horrifying in its implications.

Geoff Merrick shot to his feet, wedging his face into the iron bars so he could see a sliver of the cell block door. A few minutes later the bolts shot back and the heavy slab of metal creaked open.

They had to drag her in with her arms draped over two of the guards’ necks while the third held a set of large keys. As they drew near, Merrick saw blood caked in Susan Donleavy’s hair. Her jumpsuit had been torn at the neck and the skin of her upper chest and shoulder was livid purple. She managed to look up as they dragged her past his cage. Merrick gasped. Her face was a pulped ruin. One eye was swollen closed while she could barely lever open the other against the weight of bruising. Blood and saliva ran in ropes from her split and slack lips.

There was just the slightest flicker of life in her eye when she glanced at him.

“Dear God, Susan. I am so sorry.” He didn’t try to fight his tears. She had become so pitiable a figure that he would have cried even if she were a total stranger. That she was an employee and that he was somehow responsible for what they had done to her tore at his soul.

She spat a red glob onto the stone floor and croaked, “They didn’t even ask me any questions.”

“You bastards!” he raged at the guards. “I will pay you anything. You didn’t need to do this to her.

She’s innocent.”

They might as well have been deaf because they gave no reaction to his outburst. They just dragged her from his view. He heard her cell door open and her dumped roughly inside. The iron door was slammed shut and the lock reengaged.

Merrick decided that when they came for him he was going to fight them with everything he had. If he was going to be beaten he wanted to inflict some punishment first. He waited in his cell for them, his fists balled, his shoulders tense and ready.

The slightest guard, the one with the bright blue eyes, appeared. He held something in his hand and before Merrick could identify it or react, the guard fired. It was a Tazer that pumped fifty thousand volts into his body and overrode his central nervous system in a blaze of pain. Merrick went rigid for a second and then collapsed. By the time he regained consciousness they had him out of the cell and almost to the main door. In such agony from the blast of electricity, he’d lost all thought of fighting them.

9

SLOANEMacintyre wore a baseball cap to tame her hair against the twenty-knot wind generated by the fishing boat’s forward speed. Her eyes were protected by a pair of wraparound Oakley’s on a gaily colored cord and what skin lay exposed to the sun was slathered with SPF 30. She had on a pair of khaki shorts and a loose bush shirt festooned with pockets. On her feet she wore canvas boat shoes. The glint of a gold anklet shone in the sun.

Every time she was on the water she felt like a teen again, working her father’s charter boat off Florida’s east coast. There had been a few bad incidences when she’d taken over for her ailing father with drunken fishermen more interested in catching her than billfish or snapper, but all in all it was the greatest time of her life. The salty tang of sea air seemed to calm her very soul while the isolation of being on a hard-charging boat helped her focus her mind.

The charter boat captain, a jovial Namibian, sensed in her a kindred spirit and when she glanced at him he threw her a knowing smile. Sloane returned it. With the twin Cummins diesels bellowing under the transom it was nearly impossible to speak, so he stood from his chair and gestured for Sloane to take the controls. Her smile turned into a grin. The captain tapped the compass to indicate their heading and stepped from the wheel. Sloane slid into his position and rested her hands lightly on the worn wheel.

He stood by her side for a couple of minutes, checking that their wake continued in a straight line.

Satisfied that he was right about his passenger being able to handle the forty-six-foot cruiser, he slid down the short ladder; nodded at Tony Reardon, who was slouched in the fighting chair; and went to use the head.

Sloane would have given up on their search if those men hadn’t come after her the previous night. Their actions convinced her she was on the right track to find the HMSRove . Why else try to scare her off?

She hadn’t told Tony about the attack, but first thing this morning she’d phoned her boss and laid out the whole story. While concerned for her safety, he gave her permission to extend their stay another day so they could investigate the section of sea where Papa Heinrick had seen his giant metal snakes.

She knew she was being reckless. Any sane person would have heeded the warning and left the country on the first plane out, but that wasn’t in her nature. In all her life she had never left a task unfinished. No matter how bad a book was, she’d read it to the last word. No matter how difficult a crossword, she’d work it to the last clue. No matter how difficult the job, she would see it through to the end. It was this dogged tenacity that probably kept her in doomed relationships long after she should have ended them, but it also gave her the strength to face whoever was trying to prevent her from finding her ship.

Sloane had been cautious when hiring the charter, making sure the captain wasn’t one they had spoken to when she and Tony were putting together their map. Leaving their hotel, they had blended in with a large group of tourists who were headed to the waterfront for a charter fishing trip of their own and on the bus she made certain that no one was following them. Had she seen anything suspicious she would have called off the whole thing, but no one paid their vehicle any attention.

It was only when they were several miles from shore that Sloane told the captain where she really wanted to go. He’d told her that the section of the sea where she wanted to fish was devoid of any marine life but since she was paying he hadn’t put up much of an argument.

That had been six uneventful hours earlier, and every mile they put behind them without incident allowed Sloane to relax that little bit more. The men who had chased her must have assumed she had taken their warning to heart and given up.

The seas were building slightly with a wind out of the south. The beamy boat rode them well, rolling to starboard with each swell and returning to an even keel smartly. The captain returned from below and stood a little behind Sloane, letting her maintain the helm. He reached for a pair of binoculars from under a bench seat and scanned the horizon. He handed them to her and pointed a bit south of due west.

Sloane adjusted the binoculars to fit her face and brought them to her eyes. A big ship coasted on the horizon, a single-funneled freighter that appeared to be heading toward Walvis Bay. At this extreme range it was impossible to see any detail other than get a vague sense of her dark hull and a small forest of booms and derricks on both her fore and aft decks.

“I never see a ship like that out here before,” the charter captain said. “Only ships come to Walvis are coasters or the cruise ships. Fishermen are all closer to shore and tankers rounding the Cape run four or five hundred miles further out.”

The world’s oceans are divided into sea lanes that were almost as clearly marked as interstate highways.

With deadlines always tight and the price of keeping a vessel at sea running into the hundreds of thousands of dollars a day for supertankers, ships invariably followed the straightest line between destinations, rarely varying a mile or two. So while some parts of the ocean teemed with marine traffic, other regions never saw a single ship in a year. The charter boat was in such a dead zone—far enough from the coast to avoid regional freighters supplying Walvis Bay but well inside established routes used for rounding the Cape of Good Hope.

“There’s something else odd,” Sloane said. “There’s no smoke coming from her funnel. Do you think she’s a derelict? Maybe she was caught in a storm and the crew had to abandon her.”

Tony came up the ladder. Sloane was pondering the presence of the mystery ship and the fate of her crew and didn’t hear him so when he touched her shoulder she started.

“Sorry,” he said. “Look behind us. There’s another boat coming this way.”

Sloane whirled so fast that her hands on the wheel caused the boat to lurch to port. It was notoriously hard to judge distances at sea but she knew the boat driving hard for them could not be more than a couple of miles astern and for it to catch up to them it was running faster than the charter boat. She tossed the binoculars at the captain and eased the chrome throttle handles until they hit their stops.

“What’s going on?” Tony shouted, leaning forward as the boat picked up speed.

The captain had sensed Sloane’s fear and for the moment said nothing as he scoped the approaching craft with the binoculars.

“Do you recognize it?” Sloane asked him.

“Yes. She comes into Walvis every month or so. A yacht. Maybe fifty feet long. I do not know her name or her owner.”

“Can you see anyone?”

“There are men on the upper bridge. White men.”

“I demand to know what is going on!” Tony roared, his face flushing.

Again Sloane ignored him. Without having to see them, she knew who was in the boat behind them. She gently eased the wheel and started racing for the distant freighter, praying that her pursuers would back off if there were witnesses. Out on the open ocean she was sure they’d be killed, the fishing boat scuttled. She pressed more firmly on the throttles but the diesels were already giving her everything they had. Her lips worked as she silently prayed that she was wrong about the freighter being abandoned. If it was, they’d be dead as soon as the yacht caught up.

Tony grabbed her arm, his eyes blazing. “Damn it, Sloane, what is this all about? Who are those people?”

“I think they’re the same men who chased me back to the hotel last night.”

“Chased you? What do you mean, chased you?”

“What I said,” she snapped. “I was chased back to the hotel by two men. One of them had a gun. They warned me to leave the country.”

Tony’s anger turned into fury and even the captain looked at her with an unreadable expression. “And you didn’t see fit to tell me. Are you out of your mind? You get chased by men with guns and then lead us out here to the middle of nowhere? Good God, woman, what were you thinking?”

“I didn’t think they would follow us,” Sloane shouted back. “I messed up, all right! If we can get close enough to the freighter they won’t do anything.”

“What the hell would have happened if that freighter wasn’t here?” Spittle popped from Tony’s mouth with each word.

“Well, it is, so we’ll be fine.”

Tony turned to the ship’s owner. “Do you have a gun?”

He nodded slowly. “I use it on sharks if they come round.”

“Then I bloody well recommend you get it, mate, because we might just need it.”

The boat had been taking the waves on a gentle broadside but now that Sloane had altered their course they were cutting into them, the bow sawing up and down and sea foam exploding each time they plowed through a crest. The ride was rough and Sloane kept her knees bent to absorb each impact. The captain returned from below and wordlessly handed Sloane a worn twelve-gauge and a fistful of shells, intuitively knowing she possessed a strength Tony Reardon lacked. He retook his position at the helm and made subtle corrections as each wave passed under them so as not to lose speed. The luxury yacht had gained at least a mile while the freighter looked no closer.

She scanned the big cargo ship through the binoculars and her heart sank. The vessel was in poor repair.

Her hull was painted in myriad dark shades and looked like it had been patched with steel plates a dozen times over. She saw no one walking the decks or manning the bridge and while it looked like foam creamed off her bows as if she were making way it couldn’t be possible because there was no smoke from her stack.

“Do you have a radio?” Sloane asked the captain.

“It is below,” he replied. “But doesn’t have enough range to reach Walvis if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Sloane pointed to the freighter over the bow. “I want to alert them what’s happening so they can lower a boarding ladder.”

The captain glanced over his shoulder at the fast-approaching yacht. “It will be close.”

Sloane slid down the steep steps using just her hands, and ran into the cabin. The radio was an old transceiver bolted to the low ceiling. She powered it up and worked the knob to channel 16, the international distress band.

“Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is the fishing vesselPinguin calling the freighter en route to Walvis Bay.

We are being chased by pirates, please respond.”

A burst of static filled the cabin.

Sloane adjusted the radio dial and thumbed the microphone. “This is thePinguin calling unidentified freighter en route to Walvis. We need assistance. Please respond.”

Again she heard static, but thought she caught the ghost of a voice in the white noise. Despite the boat’s violent pitching, Sloane’s fingers were as delicate as a surgeon’s as she moved the dial in fractional increments.

A voice suddenly boomed from the speaker. “You should have listened to me last night and left Namibia.” Through the distortion Sloane was still able to recognize the voice from the previous night and her blood went cold.

Sloane mashed the microphone. “Leave us alone and we will return to shore,” she pleaded. “I will be on the first plane out. I promise.”

“That is no longer an option.”

She looked over the transom. The yacht had cut the distance to a couple hundred yards, close enough for her to see two of the men in the bridge holding rifles of some sort. The freighter was a mile or more away.

They weren’t going to make it.

“WHAT do you think, Chairman?” Hali Kasim asked from his seat at the communications station.

Cabrillo was leaning forward in his chair, an elbow on the arm of his chair, a hand cupping his unshaven chin. The forward display screen showed the view from the mast-mounted camera. The image from the gyro-stabilized video was rock solid and zoomed in on the two boats fast approaching theOregon . The fishing boat was making a solid twenty knots while the motor yacht was easily closing in at thirty-five.

They’d been watching the two craft on radar for the better part of an hour and had given their presence a low priority since the waters off Namibia’s coast were known fishing grounds. It was only when the first boat, which they now knew was calledPinguin , German for penguin, altered course to intercept the Oregon that Cabrillo was called from his cabin where he was just about ready to hit the showers after an hour in the gym.

“I don’t have the foggiest idea,” Juan said at last. “Why would pirates use a million-dollar yacht to chase an old fishing boat a hundred and fifty miles offshore? Something’s hinky. Wepps, zoom in on that yacht.

Let’s see who’s aboard her if you can.”

Mark Murphy wasn’t on duty, so the crewman manning the weapons station worked a joystick and trackball to bring up the image Cabrillo wanted. At such extreme zoom even the computer-assisted gyroscopes had a difficult time holding the picture steady. But it was good enough. Sunlight glinted off the expanse of sloping glass below the bridge but through the glare Juan could see four men on the sleek yacht’s bridge, and two of them held assault rifles. As they watched, one of them brought the weapon to his shoulder and fired a short burst.

Anticipating the coming order, the weapons officer panned back to show the fleeingPinguin . It didn’t appear she had been hit but they could see a copper-haired woman crouched behind the flat transom cradling a shotgun.

“Wepps,” Cabrillo said sharply. “Spool up the Gatling but don’t lower the hull plate. Bring up a firing solution on that yacht and pop the starboard thirty calibers from their redoubts just in case.”

“Four men with automatic weapons against a woman with a shotgun,” Hali mused. “Won’t be much of a fight if we don’t do something.”

“I’m working on it,” Cabrillo said, then nodded to his communications specialist. “Patch me through to her.”

Kasim hit a button on one of his three keyboards. “You’re live.”

Cabrillo settled his lip mike. “Pinguin,Pinguin ,Pinguin , this is the motor shipOregon. ” On the screen they could see the woman’s head whip around as she heard him over the radio.

She scrambled back inside the cabin and a moment later her breathless voice filled the operations center.

“Oregon, oh, thank God. For a minute I thought you were a derelict ship.”

“Not far from the truth,” Linda Ross deadpanned. Though not on duty, Juan had asked the elfin Ross to join him in the op center on the off chance he would need her background in intelligence.

“Please state the nature of your emergency,” Juan requested, pretending they didn’t have a bird’s-eye view of what was happening. “You mentioned pirates.”

“Yes, and they just opened fire on us with machine guns. My name is Sloane Macintyre. We’re on a fishing charter and they just suddenly appeared.”

“Didn’t sound that way to me,” Linda said, sucking her lower lip. “The guy on the yacht said he’d already warned her about something once.”

“So she’s lying,” Juan agreed. “She was just fired at and she’s lying. Interesting, don’t you think?”

“She’s gotta be hiding something.”

“Oregon,” Sloane called, “are you still there?”

Juan keyed the mike. “We’re still here.” He sized up the situation with a quick glance at the screen, projecting where each craft would be in another minute and then their locations in two. The tactical picture was grim. But worse than that was the fact he’d be acting blind. For all he knew Sloane Macintyre was the biggest drug dealer in southern Africa and was about to be greased by a rival. She and the others on thePinguin might be getting everything they deserved. On the other hand she could be totally innocent.

“Then why lie?” he whispered to himself.

If he was to preserve theOregon ’s secrets, the margin for action would be razor tight—in fact too tight.

He thought through a dozen scenarios in the time it took to scratch his chin again and made his decision.

“Helm, bring us hard to starboard; we need to cut the distance between us and thePinguin . Increase speed to twenty knots. Engineering, make sure the smudge boiler is online.” When alone at sea the Oregon produced no pollution, but when they encountered traffic a special smoke generator was switched on to create the illusion the remarkable ship was powered by conventional diesel engines.

“I fired it up a couple minutes ago,” the second engineer reported from the back of the op center.

“Should have done it as soon as they reached visual range but I forgot.”

“No big deal. I doubt anyone noticed,” Juan said before activating his mike. “Sloane, this is the master of theOregon .”

“Go ahead,Oregon .”

Juan marveled at how coolly she was handling herself and thought briefly of Tory Ballinger, an Englishwoman he’d rescued a few months back in the Sea of Japan. They had the same kind of mettle.

“We have turned to intercept you. Tell thePinguin ’s captain to take us down the port side, but don’t let on that’s the way you’re going to go. I want to trick the yacht to pass us to starboard. Do you understand?”

“We are to pass you down your port side but only at the last minute.”

“That’s right. Don’t cut it too close, though. The yacht won’t be able to make tight turns at the speed she’s doing, so avoid our bow wave as best you can. I’m going to lower our boarding stairs but don’t approach them until I give you the word. Got it?”

“We won’t approach until you signal,” Sloane repeated.

“You’re going to be fine, Sloane,” Juan said, the confidence in his voice carrying over the crackling radio link. “These aren’t the first pirates me and my crew have come across.”

On screen he saw the gunmen try to rake thePinguin again with their assault rifles but the range was still extreme from such an unstable firing platform. It didn’t look like any of the rounds came close to the charter boat, yet it firmed Juan’s resolve that they were doing the right thing in helping Sloane and her party.